


in the spring I shed my skin

by magisterequitum



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-08
Updated: 2011-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-21 04:14:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven wants. Many things, some that are as trivial as a bright orange nail polish for her toes, and some that are so deep of an ache, like wanting to be accepted and loved, that they hurt if she thinks about them too long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the spring I shed my skin

**Author's Note:**

> Written for multiple prompts on the kink meme with all varying degrees of 'OT3, and Raven joins Charles and Erik on the road trip.'

Raven wants.

Many things, some that are as trivial as a bright orange nail polish for her toes, and some that are so deep of an ache, like wanting to be accepted and loved, that they hurt if she thinks about them too long.

She wants Charles, for him to keep her by his side always, for him to accept her true form and not tell her to change back to the mask she wears every day. For him to want her.

And then they add a sopping wet, nearly drowned man to their twosome.

She wants even more then.

 

-

 

Raven is not unaware of how she is. She divides her life between before Charles found her and then after Charles took her in. Before her life was the repeated mantra of ‘run run run’, never staying in one place for too long, shifting her form in order to steal food and stay alive. After is now, with someone who is different like her, someone who cares for her, someone who keeps her from living that old mantra day in and day out.

This is why when Charles says he and Erik are going to find others like them, she says she’s coming along too. They are standing in the make shift rec room, the three of them, as Charles tells her the news.

Raven frowns, crossing her arms and tilting her chin up, steeling herself. “I want to come,” she says.

Charles's face scrunches up, and he begins to tell her no. “You should stay here--”

She cuts him off, “You would leave me here? With complete strangers.”

There’s Hank, but other than that she doesn’t really know any of these people. They seem nice, but she doesn’t have Charles's undying optimism. She can take care of herself, to a point; however, the thought that any of these CIA workers could lock her up and choose to study her while the two of them were gone doesn’t escape her.

Shifting her weight to her right foot, she goes on, “Besides, you could use me. Let’s face it, you can be annoying at times and Erik can be scary looking.” She can see the corner of Erik’s mouth tip up and considers that a victory.

And that is how she finds herself joining them the next morning on their road trip around the country looking for fellow mutants.

 

-

 

They are forty miles out from the CIA hide away. There’s a mutant in South Carolina that controls fire. She thinks it’s cool, though she doesn’t use the same words as Charles, groovy not being part of her vocabulary.

Erik drives, Charles sits shotgun, and Raven’s spread herself lengthwise out in the back seat of their government loaned sedan. It’s domestic.

Charles turns to look at her, “Raven, your seatbelt.”

She looks lazily up from the map in her lap. She’s been tracing the rivers along their way. “Yeah?”

He frowns, as if she’s the most suffering thing in the world, which she enjoys being to him. “It’s not on.”

Up front, Erik is quietly observing from the rear-view mirror. She wonders if they, Charles and her, are annoying or interesting to him since he’s spent so much of his life alone; she’s not the only one who’s learned bits and pieces about him. She grins and says, “Very observant.”

 _Raven_ , he whispers across her mind, disapproval in the press of words.

It’s her turn to frown. The smile slips from her lips. She’s got her upper body behind the driver’s seat, so it’s nothing for her to lift her leg and kick the back of Charles's seat. “Oh shut up, Mom.” She hooks her foot on the seat, stretching out the muscles that have started to cramp up. “I’m sure if something happens Erik can save us both.”

That earns a snort from the driver. Charles mumbles something else, but drops it.

See, domestic. She goes back to the map, pleased.

 

-

 

 

Raven watches them.

Charles and Erik.

She sees the pull to one another, the same pull that she’d had when she broke into the mansion’s kitchen years ago and discovered that she wasn’t alone, there was someone else out there different like her. She feels it too. She had it with Charles when she first found him, and now with Erik. They circle around one another, closer and closer. They don’t exclude her, but sometimes she can still see the hesitance in Charles over her true form where Erik is fascinated.

It eats away at her, and the ache cuts deeper each day.

 

-

 

The mutant in South Carolina turns out to be a dead end. After they find her, they barely make it off the woman’s yard without missing eyebrows or burnt hair. The woman is in her late thirties and has no intention, she tells them, of becoming known to the CIA or anyone else. There’s a sense of reality to her words, that the CIA will only lead to the public knowing fully and then hatred from there.

Their protests and attempts at rationalization die when she flicks her hand and fire is suddenly at their feet. It’s only when Erik uses the wind chime on her porch to bind her hands that they are saved. He releases the metal after they are back in the car, but only when Charles says something and Raven backs him up.

They don’t have long to dwell on their failure as they’ve got many more names on the list. Some they find are just like the woman in South Carolina: unwilling to leave the safety of their privacy and anonymity. It upsets Charles, Charles who wants so badly to create a world where no one has to fear being different; a fact which rankles Raven when she thinks about how his eyes turn when she reverts to her true form.

Others are too old or too young. They find many with gifts that have lived decades in the shadows of life. Their stories are moving, sadness and joy intertwined amidst snapshot memories. The ones that are too young they promise that a place will always be available to them later; later when they are not training to fight a war or rather to prevent one, depending on who you talk to.

The point is, the most important one, is that there are others out there like them. It’s something that fills all three of them with reassurance.

 

-

 

They find a diner restaurant to eat at.

They’re tired from a long day of traipsing around Chicago. Charles from having to struggle to keep the thoughts of so many people out, Raven from the heaviness of wearing her blonde persona that eventually wears her down after so long, and Erik from taking care of both of them. They order burgers and fries.

Raven sips at her milkshake, tips of her fingers wrapped around the straw. Charles is chattering away about something; tiredness doesn’t stop him from speaking. She knocks her knee into Erik who sits to her left in the booth. Her eyes remain on Charles, but she can see from the corner of her eye Erik’s mouth pull up at the corner.

He taps her back with the toe of his boot.

She snorts, nearly chokes on the thick shake, and has to clear her throat.

Charles stops talking and looks at both of them. “What?” he asks, and he could easily read their minds if he wanted to. But he doesn’t.

“Nothing,” she says, “Go on.”

“Yes, do go on.” Erik backs her up.

He presses his boot against her own after Charles resumes. It makes her smile around the straw.

 

-

 

Once, when they are in their hotel room for the night, she catches Erik practicing. They stay in the same room, rotating between two beds and a couch. They don’t want to split up, and Raven insists that she’s fine with it; rather she likes the looks that she catches both men giving her sometimes.

She’s coming in from outside where she forgot her book in the car. From the noise of running water, she can tell that Charles has decided to shower. She pauses in the doorway of their room, watching the man on the bed. She knows that it’s rage and vengeance that drives him, understands that from the brief snatches of what he’s told her and the stolen glimpse of the tattooed numbers on his arm.

Erik’s taken the metal ornament that had been on the nightstand. Before it had been some abstract shape, but now it is liquid that he runs between his fingers. Over and under, between the knuckles, wrapping around long fingers with clean cut nails. Every so often, he manipulates the metal into a new shape: star, ball, apple, a dog.

Practicing is the wrong word, she thinks. Honing skills that already exist is more apt.

It’s beautiful.

She tells him so.

He pauses, his face unchanging. “As is yours.”

His acceptance in that voice causes her to flush. Her skin flickers from pale flesh to blue scales, and that causes her skin to deepen even further.

Charles chooses that moment to exit the bathroom. She hadn’t even heard that water shut off. He stares at them, says nothing, but the look in his eyes tells her he knows what both of them are thinking. She knows him sometimes better than he knows himself.

The moment is broken. But later that night, when they are both asleep and she lies in bed, she thinks about those fingers on her. And then her thoughts shift to two sets of fingers on her.

She wants.

 

-

 

Angel agrees easily after a demonstration in the strip club. The other girl’s excitement is apparent, vibrating on her skin like the wings on her back.

Raven is fascinated. Both Charles and Erik have abilities that are not seen on the outside. Angel can hide hers, like Raven, but the wings are like hers in the way that their true forms are outward focused. She does not hesitate to turn to show the other girl.

After, when Angel slips out, she doesn’t change back. She catches both men staring at her. Erik’s with the familiar fascination that she has been able to read in the intensity of his gaze. Charles's she doesn’t understand.

“What?” The question comes out snappish, thinking he’s going to lecture her like he had when she’d turned eleven and he’d told her shouldn’t go about that way anymore.

He turns away from her, long line of his neck moving as he swallows. He says nothing.

She doesn’t understand. There are emotions in his eyes that she thinks she sees, desire and trepidation, but she cannot be sure. She would give anything to borrow his telepathy for the moment.

And Erik, Erik sits there and watches as if he understands more than either of them; he does.

 

-

 

Angel, Alex, Sean, and Armando.

They add all of them to their group. Take them and send them on back to the CIA hideaway on trains. The three of them are pleased.

Raven sits at the vanity in their hotel room. It’s a small mirror, but enough for what she’s doing. The men had gone to get dinner. She’d begged off going, wanting time for herself.

In truth, she’s a bit morose. She’s happy that they have added to their group, found fellow mutants that need a place in the world as much as they do and desired that. But she cannot help the thoughts that her ability is not quite up to the others’. It’s not that she doesn’t like what she is capable of. She does.

However, it’s not the same as being able to lift a car from the street, or read the thoughts of anyone around and change those thoughts, or emit a scream at any frequency, or anything else that is powerful.

It’s not the same. And there is the fact that she fights to feel comfortable in her own form. She’s loved it herself, unable to understand why others couldn’t accept what she is, love what she loves, and that is the problem. That is why she puts on the blonde mask she wears each day like someone who puts on eyeliner and foundation.

Raven flickers from face to face, body shuddering from one breathe to the next. She is the cab driver from last week, the waitress who took their breakfast order, the homeless man from yesterday, the President, and then Marilyn Monroe. She doesn’t say anything, but if she wanted to she could easily adopt their personalities as well. She’s good at reading people.

Shaking herself, she’s her mask again. She wraps a finger around a bouncy blonde curl, so different from the straight, slicked back red of her true form. The fair skin not blue or scaled in some places.

Raven changes again until it’s gold eyes that stare at her from the mirror. Gold and blue and red.

The door opens, and she turns to see Erik in the doorway. He says nothing, just stares.

“I’m not the same,” she says, “Not the way you or Charles or the others are. I can’t blow anything up or wipe someone’s mind.”

He understands, he too reads people. Maybe she hasn’t been as secretive with her thoughts as she’d thought. Maybe it’s all over her face the way she feels. Maybe, maybe, maybe, but this is real as he walks to her, crouching down until his body frames hers in the mirror.

“You must know all that you can do,” his fingers stroke along the scales on the side of her neck. “You can be anyone.” The way he says this is not meant to be like the way she used to pretend to be Charles's mother the one time he got into trouble at school.

Raven tilts her face towards his. From the corner of her eye she can still see their reflection.

Erik breathes out, “Perfection,” against her lips, and then those long fingers are cupping the side of her face. It’s wonderful, and she’s never dared to kiss anyone in her true form.

There is the clearing of a throat that is not theirs. Charles stands in the door now, an unreadable expression on his face. She tenses, ready to change, ready to fight, ready to flee.

Erik turns his body towards Charles, never letting go of her face, no regret or embarrassment or shame shown on his. “Charles,” he says, voice hard and sure. “What did I say?”

He beckons her brother closer, and she understands then that they’ve been talking about her. That makes her angry, and then God, _they’ve been talking about her_. They know. That she wants them both, and she has no doubt that this means Erik has been perceptive, brought it up, and that Charles confirmed it by reading her thoughts; he wouldn’t do it purposefully, not delving into her mind, but she probably projected them enough. Charles is her brother, but never in the sense that she hasn’t thought about him as someone she desired. And now there is Erik too. Once, briefly, the fact that she wanted two men had entered her mind as something that could be wrong. But she knows herself, knows she can be selfish. She doesn’t care.

Does that mean they want her too?

Erik, she can tell. Charles, though...

 _Charles?_ she thinks, sends out with practiced ease.

 _I’m not sorry_ , is her reply. And of course he’s not. She’s nearly angry again, but then he reassures her with a feeling of warmth. _Not for reading your mind. Not for this... For discovering..._

She’d made him promise once to never read her mind. Even then she’d known that it would be a somewhat hollow one. Charles could never really keep his brain from picking up stray thoughts, ones that were projected with the added power of emotions behind them, and his ego didn’t stop him from wanting to pick them up or leave room to apologize for doing it. Once, she’d asked him if he could see her as someone to date. She lets that drift to the front of her mind for him to read.

 _Yes._ And then there is a rush of acceptance, and sadness, and grief at ever making her think he couldn’t love her. With her mind open, he can feel all of her emotions. She lets him sift through them and send his own back.

Erik seems to be impatient with their non verbal communication. He tugs her face back to his, presses his lips to hers, teeth a hard line, tongue sliding into her open mouth. Greedy, she thinks, and cannot blame him; he’s had so little to call his own, and the two of them are his now. She can feel the way he shakes to hold onto them. Hesitance and need war with him.

It’s good and wonderful. When he releases her mouth, it is to take Charles's who has joined them. She watches as they kiss. These two, her boys, her men. “Bed,” she orders as they break apart.

The bed is not that big. It’s a twin that matches it’s other against the window. Somehow they manage to settle all three of their bodies and make it work. Raven settles over Charles who lies on the bed. He looks up at her, eyes bright as he slides fingers over her stomach and down between her legs. She gasps as he finds her clit, a choked noise that gets caught in her throat. Erik is a warm weight at her back, lips and teeth on her neck and shoulders. She shudders between their fingers, and it’s better than her dreams and thoughts from earlier.

Afterwards, when she has ridden Charles to completion, and Erik has come too, when Charles has made her come with his fingers and Erik his mouth, and Erik and Charles had satiated themselves with each other, she lies between them. They are asleep, both for once, and she listens to their breathing. It’s quiet.

Raven smiles in the dark with the ceiling the only one to see. Charles’s body is turned towards her, arm resting over her waist. Erik faces the door, away from them, but his hand still touches where Charles’s is on her. She feels safe and content. She’s in her true form. Mystique, she thinks would be a good name, remembering what Erik had told her earlier about how she could be anyone. Magneto for him. She giggles at the thought of code names.

Tomorrow, they will go back to the compound. Their new friends will be there, eager and ready to begin. She hopes there is a bed big enough for the three of them. But if they could make this one work, then they surely can figure it out there too.

Tomorrow is tomorrow.. She will worry about keeping them together, bridging Charles’s optimism and Erik’s need for justice, later. But for now she is here and warm. That is what she chooses to hold to as she joins them in sleep.


End file.
